From Anthology Film Archives:
Describing Doppelganger, Peggy Ahwesh writes: “It’s a portrait of my friend Renate, who was born in Berlin and spent her early childhood playing in the rubble after WW2. She tells stories and recites entries from her diary in both English and German, evoking history, trauma and lost loves. Shot in long verite-like takes, in Super 8 sound, with several color hand processed scenes.” Produced in 1987 and screened only a handful of times, this work has always been a favorite of the artist. Its shortage of screenings is more due to the fragile nature of the edited original rather than any question of quality or content. Equally charming and disarming, intimate and harrowing, Doppelganger is a deeply introspective work that is concerned with the feeling of liberation that arises via confession, as well as the distortion of memory in time. Discussing her aesthetic approach, Ahwesh states:

"I return again and again to filmmaking because of the resistance that image and sound material have to being contained by a simple logic or an assignment of meaning. Spilling over in excess, the subversive power, beauty and emotional charge of the material always surprises me. When these fluid conditions are activated and the performers are really on, my job is to massage a form out of what has been conjured up. My kind of storytelling, multi-centered and multi-layered, with the drama of all the in-between moments, uses a kind of non-technique as technique and non-narrative's narrative."

NYWIFT programs, screenings and events are supported, in part, by grants from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.